11 Ways to Use SlideShare for Content Marketing Success

SlideShare is more than just a way to share your presentations online; it can be a powerful content marketing tool that can turbocharge all of your publishing endeavors.

Regardless of the reasons why you’re publishing — whether it’s to generate leads, build your list, educate your prospects, enhance user satisfaction, or promote your informational products — you can use SlideShare at every step of your process as you plan, write, promote, and profit from the content you create in the form of print books, eBooks, reports, tip sheets, white papers, and more.

Why use SlideShare?

SlideShare is an online hosting service that makes it easy to efficiently leverage your presentations with more of your followers, clients, and prospects. SlideShare’s value as a publishing tool is based on several of its key characteristics:

Efficiency: SlideShare leverages the power of software programs you likely are already familiar with, like Microsoft’s PowerPoint and Apple’s Keynote. If you’ve ever created a presentation using one of these popular software programs, you can easily get started on SlideShare without a lengthy learning curve, overburdening your already-stretched staff resources, or incurring the costs and delays of outside production.

Ability to be updated easily: Using SlideShare, you can easily update your presentation as your publication takes shape and its launch date approaches.

Visibility: SlideShare is search engine optimized; as a result, presentations will attract viewers on their own. In addition, you can easily embed SlideShare presentations in your blogs and web pages, and include them in your emails.

Trackability: Finally, SlideShare tracks each presentation’s views and downloads, so you can monitor interest in your topic over time. If desired, you can also add lead generation forms to encourage viewers to immediately contact you to find out how to take the next step.

A cycle for publishing success

Most content creators focus the majority of their efforts on the creative and stylistic aspects of writing, without paying enough attention to the equally important tasks involved in planning, promoting, and profiting from their writing. This one-sided approach typically results in disappointment and frustration.

In response to this challenge, I created a four-step Publishing Success Cycle, which provides a framework for using SlideShare as a publishing tool that can provide value throughout the entire writing process, from the first phases of planning to the end goal of profiting from your work.

Step 1: Planning

SlideShare makes it easy to test your assumptions while planning your publication, giving you an easy way to market-test your ideas and fine tune them before you go too far along the wrong track.

Here are four of the ways you can test market your idea and, by doing so, increase the likelihood of project success:

Test-market your book or premium idea: A SlideShare presentation provides an easy way to create a visual walk-through of your project — one that’s far more engaging and memorable than an online text survey. The presentation format allows you to describe the topics you’re going to discuss, the benefits your content will offer, and the information you’re going to share, and lets you invite your audience to comment and suggest additional topics for each chapter.

Test your titles and subtitles: After describing the subject matter of your upcoming project in your presentation, you can conclude by testing proposed title and subtitle ideas. For example, you could share three proposed titles and subtitles and invite viewers to select the options that interest them the most, or you could invite them to submit their own title ideas based on information you provide.

Share design ideas: As your project moves forward, and after you’ve finalized the title of your content, you can share proofs of different cover images or other visual elements, inviting viewers to help you select the artwork that best matches your title and content.

Invite content comments: By sharing the chapter-by-chapter development of your topic, you can invite viewers to comment on your project’s contents and suggest ideas and questions for each chapter.

By using SlideShare during the planning stage, you’re not only generating valuable feedback on your content project, but you’re engaging your market on an emotional level by asking for their ideas, preferences, and impressions of your work. This builds familiarity and anticipation for your forthcoming project, increasing the chances of its success.

Step 2: Writing

Waiting until after a project has been completed is a frequent mistake that continues to undermine the success of authors and publishers. Here are some of the ways you can use SlideShare while writing your project.

Introduce the authors: Use SlideShare to build a personal link among the authors, contributors, and your project’s prospective readers. Use photographs and anecdotes to share your story— your goals, challenges, and victories — as each chapter is completed. Use SlideShare presentations, with accompanying videos where appropriate, to create a community around your publication.

Share chapters as you write them: Update your SlideShare presentation as new chapters are completed and made available for download. As bestselling authors like David Meerman Scott and Seth Godin have repeatedly shown, getting your drafts into your reader’s hands as quickly as possible pays big dividends. Usually, chapters are distributed as text links within blog posts. However, presenting chapter downloads in the context of a visual walk-through of your book will be far more effective.

Step 3: Promoting

The following are some of the ways you can use SlideShare to launch your publication with great fanfare, and extend the marketing and promotional momentum you build for as long as you desire.

For example, as your book launch date approaches, you can support your Amazon.com publication date by preparing a promotion that shows the reader bonuses that your marketing partners have contributed to help you launch your book to success. And after your book launch, you can prepare mini-presentations showing how specific market segments can benefit from your book. Further, when speaking about your book at live events, you can post speaker handouts on SlideShare.

Here are a few more ideas:

Embed presentations into website landing pages: SlideShare can help set your promotion activities apart from the competition’s. Some publication landing pages (i.e., pages designed to encourage publication downloads or purchase) can be dull because the graphics are limited to showing the publication’s front cover — which really doesn’t communicate much information. With SlideShare, however, you can promote your publications with a self-paced tour of your publication, accompanied (if desired) with audio narration. You can show what’s inside your publication instead of just what’s on the cover, which will greatly increase list-building efforts and/or sales.

Create a pre-publication incentive: Use embedded SlideShare presentations to offer a reason for your audience to order, or sign up for, your publication as soon as possible. One of the easiest ways to do this is to create electronic incentives — like bonus videos, checklists, work sheets, interview transcriptions, or a preview chapter — that you can immediately send to those who commit to purchasing your content offerings in advance.

Create a launch promotion: If you’re publishing a book or eBook that will be sold on Amazon.com, launch your book to success with a 24-hour promotion on the day your book appears. The easiest way to do this is to solicit bonus incentives from your marketing partners — others in your field who complement you, but don’t directly compete with you. If you can drive enough Amazon.com purchases in your book or eBook’s specific category during a 24-hour period, you can continue to describe your book or eBook as an Amazon Top 100 book!

Step 4: Profiting

Even the best publications can benefit from continued promotion. By updating your SlideShare presentations, you can continue to benefit from downloads of your list-building incentives and profits from purchasing content such as your white papers, books and eBooks.

Here are some ways to keep your publication relevant and newsworthy:

Offer premium content updates: New ideas are likely to continue to appear long after the launch of your publication. Update your SlideShare presentations to leverage these ideas by offering them as bonus articles, reports, tip sheets, or work sheets available to those who haven’t yet downloaded or purchased your project. (Obviously, you can also offer them retroactively to those who have already downloaded or purchased your publication.)

Slice and dice publication content for new markets: Look for ways to adapt your project for vertical markets and specific challenges. For example, if your original SlideShare presentation described the six chapters in your publication, create a series of six follow-up presentations, each focusing on a specific chapter in greater detail. Likewise, if your original SlideShare presentation focused on a topic serving a broad market (i.e., 101List-Building Secrets), consider creating SlideShare presentations specific to your target markets (i.e., 101 List-Building Secrets for Self-Employed Professionals, 101 List-Building Secrets for Lawyers, 101 List-Building Secrets for Seasonal Hospitality Firms, etc.).

Tips for using SlideShare as a publishing tool

Here are some of the ways you can optimize your use of SlideShare as you begin to explore its capabilities.

Update frequently: Don’t view your SlideShare presentations as set in stone. You can easily update them as new ideas and information becomes available. And, when you update a SlideShare presentation, you’re also updating the versions you’ve embedded elsewhere in your content.

Show pages from your writing in your SlideShare presentation: Obtain a screen capture utility (like TechSmith’s SnagIt), which will allow you to easily add images of pages — and portions of pages — to your SlideShare presentations.

Include a relevant URL within your presentation: Instead of grouping download or purchase links (such as links to download specific chapters), add the links to the page of your presentation that describes each chapter. (Note: Before uploading PDF presentations to SllideShare, be sure to use Acrobat Recorder’s Advanced Tools to activate all text links throughout your presentation. Uploading presentations is a good idea because it eliminates possible font problems.)

Place reader reviews in the appropriate context: Instead of grouping reader reviews and comments from experts in your field together at the end of your SlideShare presentation, consider adding comments and reviews throughout your presentation. This is especially true if the reader comment is relevant to a specific chapter.

Cultivate audio and video testimonials: There’s a huge difference between engaging reader reviews and testimonials that sit passively on a page. Always try to personalize comments and testimonials by adding a photograph. And whenever possible, solicit audio or video comments, which will add an extra dimension to the feedback your audience provides. (To learn more about using audio or video comments, explore resources for using Skype to record audio and video testimonials or services like Evoca.)

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Thx for these tips. Slideshare is a really good media for all marketer ! Did you try the paiement ? It’s efficient ?

Roger C. Parker

Thank you for the comment. If, by “paiement,” you meant the lead generating form in the first Pro version option, I found the process surprisingly easy and had no payment problems.

As an example of the thought that seems built into SlideShare, I really like the way that you can “test the system” without charge, i.e., a nice touch that I’ve seen in other systems.

Congrat’s on the great resources you offer on your site!

Roger

Casey Gollan

Great tips! I would add that with a Slideshare Pro account you can add a lead gen form right in the presentation. So you could potentially offer a teaser of your content in the slideshare and then allow people to request the full version right there in the form within the slideshare.

While I’m completely on board with embedding slideshares into a landing page and know this to be a highly effective strategy, there is no doubt that others may embed your slideshare into to their sites/blogs. If you don’t use a form within your slideshare you may miss out on those conversions.

Roger C. Parker

Dear Casey:
Thank you for your kind words, and for building on the original topic.

Your caution about using the form built into your SlideShare is very important. Basically, to review, with the SlideShare Pro account, your interactive contact sign-up form appears as the new last slide in presentation, so it will follow your presentation no matter where it’s displayed.

Thanks, again! Roger

http://twitter.com/Soulati Jayme Soulati

I have always been reluctant to post my decks, but just finished one I think I’d like to offer up for viewing pleasure on social media. I also didn’t know SlideShare could publish books, too. I need to look into this as i’m helping someone write a book and am at the place where I have to design it in some way and add photos.

Roger C. Parker

Dear Jayme: Great questions!

When you say “reluctant to post my decks,” I just want to emphasize that you don’t necessarily have to make all of your decks available. Have you considered posting just “excerpts” or “best of” compilations from your favorite or most powerful decks?

Just go into PowerPoint, do a “Save as…” and just provide enough of your original presentations to encourage/motivate viewers to share their e-mail address in exchange for viewing the full presentation–or more presentation topics. Use the sign-up form available at SlideShare’s Premium makes this really easy.

Regarding “publishing books,” note that SlideShare accepts two types of presentations: traditionally landscape, or horizontal, format “slides” as well as portrait, or vertical, “documents” which are simply 8 1/2 by 11 pages formatted using Adobe Acrobat’s PDF (Portable Document Files).

So, you have 2 major options. Either way, your work will proceed very efficiently and smoothly once you have a template to work with, either in PowerPoint, Microsoft Word, or–basically–any page layout program. It depends on how much information you want to share as well as any corporate design standards your client’s materials must adhere to.

Keep us informed!

Chris Adams

Roger,

Excellent article for Slideshare beginners like us. As we are expanding our Social Media campaigns into Slide share we were looking for best practices. This definitely helps.
Please let us know if you have any other suggestions in regards to testing ideas and titles? How do we ensure that we have enough participation from the users?

I think the starting point–which you may already be doing– would be to test 2 or 3 ideas and title options on the title slides at a time, including your current SlideShare project’s URLs in the signatures of your firm’s emails. The goal would be to frequently rotate the SlideShare URLs so that–over the period of a week–each tested variable would receive equal emphasis.

This would provide some comparison of the relative appeal of different ideas and titles.

Likewise, you could use modest pay-per-click campaigns to test different ideas and titles.

Finally, if you’re using SlideShare’s premium lead generating form feature to channel requests from each different SlideShare idea or title option to a different email address for tracking and following.